


Twenty Years Later

by Slumber



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Harry Potter Next Generation, Hogwarts House Sorting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-09
Updated: 2011-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:26:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26391886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slumber/pseuds/Slumber
Summary: The next-gen kids and their thoughts on Sorting.
Kudos: 1
Collections: 30-minute Writer's Block Challenge





	Twenty Years Later

**Lily**

"It's okay," Lily is telling Hugo as they run through the wall to get into Platform 9 3/4. "Daddy says Hogwarts is going to be _fun_!"

"I know it is," Hugo says. His eyes are still thoughtful and he frowns. "But where am I supposed to be Sorted now? Where are they going to Sort me?"

Lily shrugs. She had a brother who was a Gryffindor and another who was in Hufflepuff, and after the debacle that was last year and her parents' reaction to Albus' Sorting she figures she can't really be bothered with the family heritage any longer. "You get Sorted wherever you want!" she decides with certainty.

"Lily, Hugo is going to be Sorted where the hat thinks he'll be best," her mum tells her kindly. 

Lily only shakes her head. "Daddy said you can tell the hat where to go. Daddy said you can _choose_."

She doesn't miss the look her mum gives her dad, who only sputters something about making choices and how they matter most in the end.

"Come _on_ ," she says, grabbing Hugo by the hand and dragging him inside. "We're gonna miss the train!"

**Hugo**

Hugo doesn't worry about many things unless they warrant worrying. So that means, obviously, that he has a long list of concerns. His parents were more than happy to tell him they were going to be proud of him no matter what, and that they would love him whatever happened, but he is sure they're only saying that so he'd agree to go to Hogwarts in the end.

He doesn't really want to, now.

Last year Rose wrote back after her first day at school and told everyone she was all right, but Hugo can tell, from the way his dad's face turned purple and the way his mother clutched the letter to her hand, nearly crumpling it, that something was wrong.

That something was _terribly_ wrong.

Rose came back fine, of course. She was still the sister he knew and she still played with him and told him stories about the school, but Hugo could sense something was up regardless.

And now he is properly worried.

"What if--" he starts, but Lily doesn't hear him. She shoves him, in typical Lily style, into a compartment and sits them down. 

"This is going to be so much _fun_!" she says.

Hugo hopes she is right.

**James**

"Oy! You guys!" James says, passing by moments later with a few of his friends. He nods at Harry (too many of his friends are named Harry) and waves him and Hermione (too many of his friends are named Hermione too) away. "You go on ahead. I'll follow later."

He pokes his head in the compartment, where Lily is resolutely talking Hugo's ear off and he is resolutely ignoring her.

"Alright in here?" he asks.

"Oh! Hi James, yeah we're fine," Lily says. 

"Hugo? You alright?" 

Hugo wrinkles his nose. "I don't want to be a Hufflepuff," he says. "Or a Ravenclaw. Nothing wrong with those houses, right, but I want to be in _Gryffindor_ , like my dad and mum."

James enters, shuts the door behind him. He nods solemnly. "It's okay, Hugo," he says. "You're definitely the most Gryffindor guy I know."

"Really?"

To be honest he thinks Hugo has the tendency to worry like a Hufflepuff, and the keenness in books and stuff like a Ravenclaw, but while James made sure to make Albus' life a little difficult after his Sorting, he doesn't actually find anything wrong with a different house. They were all alright, he thinks. (He'd never think to make Lily's life difficult--she'll only probably get back double. Personally, he'd not be surprised if she ended up in Slytherin.) "Positive."

At this Hugo smiles, and James ruffles his hair. He's fond of Hugo. He's always quiet and nice and never bothers James, and even looked impressed when James returned during second year hols after making seeker on the Gryffindor team. 

**Albus**

"Albus, it's time to change."

"What? Oh, right, yeah," Albus says. He looks up at last from his book--just light reading material on the history of Hogwarts--and smiles uneasily at Rose. She'd already turned her back to him, rooting through her own things to pick out the robes that her parents had bought her after she grew like a foot taller over the summer.

He makes his way to his own bag, picking out the yellow and black tie that he had never in a million years thought he'd wear. His dad seemed okay with it, in the end, and even his mum had offered words of support, but something about the way they talked around him made him a bit uneasy.

Certainly his gran couldn't excuse the way she basically keeled over from shock when he wrote back to tell her that the red-and-gold jumper she'd sent him was actually not his house colors, as her letter had implied, and could she please send him some in the Hufflepuff colors next year? (He'd been polite and everything too, but he guesses that wasn't good enough.)

It wasn't so bad, being a Hufflepuff. He was doing fine in classes and he liked his Housemates well enough. They were a great house, really. Not a bunch of duffers at all, like his brother James had teased multiple times.

He likes their common room too. 

"Hey Rose?"

"Hm?" She'd already smoothed over her tie. It didn't look bad on her, the blue-and-bronze of the eagle. You'd think her parents would be proud, but after the debacle of last year--

"Lily and Hugo are going to be fine, right?"

**Rose**

Rose smiles at Albus in reply. It's the only thing she can do--she's got a sharp mind and quick wit, things Rowena Ravenclaw did value in her students--but sometimes she wonders if maybe honesty is all it's cracked up to be. 

The truth is that she knows her parents mean well, but at the heart of it, old prejudices die hard. The sins of the father, and all of that.

"Lily and Hugo will be okay," she says, and it's true. Lily is one of the most outspoken people she knows, and that's counting the adults. Hugo is a little timid, a little shy, but he's got a good head about him and she's going to be proud of him no matter what. Whatever their parents say, whatever house they end up in, she thinks they'll find their way eventually. 

She's glad Albus didn't include qualifiers in his statement--when she says they're going to be okay, she means they're not going to find Sorting as difficult as Albus thinks they will. She knows full well Albus is asking about them getting into Gryffindor, and the truth is, that's only something the Hat would know, wouldn't it?

Someone knocks on their compartment, and she stands up. "Hang on--" she says, and opens the door. "Scorpius!"

**Scorpius**

"Sorry, I was nearly late," Scorpius says, smiling hesitantly when he sees Albus in the compartment with Rose. He is wearing his Ravenclaw tie with some reluctance--it took his mum all of the entire summer to convince him she wasn't disappointed, and that his father would eventually come around. He's not very close friends with Albus but Rose likes her cousin well enough, and Scorpius likes Rose well enough (he overheard his mum telling one of her friends it was the friendship with Ronald Weasley's daughter that was bothering his father so much, but that was silly, Scorpius thought) so he's willing to be civil if Albus is.

Which seems likely, since he's a Hufflepuff. He's already grinning back, scooting over to give him a seat, and offering him a Chocolate Frog. All in the first minute of his arrival.

"How was your summer?" Rose asks, sitting back across from Albus. 

Scorpius takes the seat beside Albus to face Rose and props his feet up beside her. "It was okay," he says. "Went to France. Just came back yesterday, and we all were so knackered we overslept. Almost missed the train but got on just in time."

"I don't know what you would've done if you'd missed it!" Rose says.

"Dad says he and Uncle Ron did one time, because of a house elf," Albus pipes up. "They flew a car over London to get to Hogwarts!"

It sounds like a load of crock to Scorpius but he raises an eyebrow and asks Albus to tell him more. It's for Rose's benefit, he thinks.

They have a long year ahead of them and it wouldn't do to antagonize his best friend's friends.

**Meanwhile, in Hogwarts**

The Sorting Hat has had a long summer. Sort of. It's less eventful than the past summers have been, and these days it's decided that haikus make by far more efficient songs than sonnets or other kinds of poetry ever did.

It is on the last verses of this year's song, coming up with a word that rhymes with cooperation and wondering whether it was really five syllables or not.

Sometimes haiku were difficult that way, it reasons.

The Sorting Hat does more than Sort, it decides. Long ago that was its task but it also took it long enough to figure, when Gryffindor decided that it needed a Hat to decide where students went, that it was also responsible for house unity above all.

It had always been responsible for house unity.

It had screwed up many times actually following that tenet, but these days it had much more effective ways of achieving this. From students' minds it read the prejudice of their parents still lingered, long after their sins were supposedly forgiven, and it has since devised a plan to pierce through those biases. It had hoped it had done enough with Weasley's and Malfoy's the year prior, but it knows another set of Weasley and Potter are about to start Hogwarts.

The dungeons, it reasons, will definitely have a _very_ interesting class this year.

**Author's Note:**

> Please consider donating to local organizations who support trans individuals in your area.


End file.
